Hitting The 40 Year Mark

I was born in 1972.  That means that I am right now 38 and will be turning 39 in November.  What does this mean?  Well, to me it means that I am quickly approaching my 40's and really nothing to show for it.

I have no home that is mine, no career, no savings, no anything else that I should have at this age.  I promised myself that by the age of 40 I would be set, should anything happen and I am left alone.  Right now if I was left alone I am afraid I would sink faster then a paddle boat. 

The best part about turning older is the fact that your sex drive, in women anyway, hits a high gear and you start to wonder what in the heck has happened to you.  The bad part about that is, you must make sure your husband is in the best shape of his life, cause he isn't that eager young teenage boy as before.

Another bad part of that is the start of that unforgiving M word.  Yes you know what I am talking about.  Sweating is the worst part.  And it is so embarrassing.  When you are wringing your shirt out and your hair is soaking wet and you look around and nobody else looks even remotely hot.  Then the emotions.  One day up, three days down.  Depressed, Depressed, ok but Still depressed, to has perky as a 14 year old.  Menopause is a roller coaster of which seems there is no end in sight...and the kicker....its ONLY PRE-MENOPAUSE!

Oh yeah, being a woman and getting older isn't easy.  When I worked at a nursing home, I always wondered why the older women were mostly bitter.  They hated the aids.  It was like they were pissed off at us cause we were younger.  The older men...such a delight.  The majority of them were just as sweet and kind.  Now, being a woman and getting older...I now know why the older women were so bitter.  We have to go through a lot!!!!!

Men get up, take a shower, swipe a comb through their hair, put on deodorant if your lucky, get dressed and out the door they go.  Never to have their friend visit monthly, sometimes not at all, which causes more emotions, never go through the pain of child birth, no menopause...no nothing.  Sometimes I think to myself...I CAN'T WAIT TO MEET EVE!

I guess I am not being fair to the men, they do have the hard job of bringing enough money home to support the family, then hold the couch down so it don't go anywhere.  Oh yes I am not dumb to the fact that men have midlife crisses...but it is usually just because they realize they are getting old.  That's another thing, why is it that men get more handsome when they get older?  My husband, his greying hair is just as soft and whispy as it was when it was all one color.  My greying hair is so corse it wont even dye.  His wrinkles are in his forehead...the worry lines, and can be covered with his hair..Mine..around my mouth.  He is still as thin if not thinner then the day I met him....Me..my butt is bigger, my belly is bigger and I AM SHIRINKING! 

So I guess my point is this.  As 40 gets nearer, my dreams of being thin and beautiful with a house and sweat free gets farther.  I am becoming...my mother.

B

Home Sick

I woke this morning with incrediable pain in my heart.  I had been crying in my sleep.  This made no sense to me on waking, until I tried to remember my dream.

In my dream everyone I have ever known was around me.  Ones from my past and my present, dead and alive.  I remember looking upon their faces and crying.  Then I realized it was a place that was fimilar to me.  Home...

The way things use to be, mama was there with a big smile and looked so happy to see me.  Daddy's face was stern but love filled his eyes. My sister, my brothers, grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends, cousins.  They all looked like they did...when we were a family.

I am so very home sick.  I don't even know if home sick is the right words, but I miss people.  Not just any people, but the people that use to love me.  I use to be so very loved.  To lose a loved one is hard, but to lose every single person you have loved for 38 years is devastating.

I long to see a fimilar face.  This is the longest I have ever went my entire life without seeing someone I know.  I don't know anyone anymore.  I see three faces every single day, and don't get me wrong, I love those 3 beautiful faces...but I need a new, old face.  I need someone to hug me, someone to just really hug me til I feel I wont be able to breath.  I need someone to look me in the eye and tell me how they have missed me...and mean it.

Seems like I always talk the same stuff on here.  I have nobody else to talk to.  I guess I keep hoping that someone out there will respond, and tell me they know what I am going through.  Even though I know I am not the only one, sometimes I just can't help but feel like I am the only one that has ever gone through this because I can't really explain my emotions to make people truely understand.

I want to be a little girl again.  I want to wake in the morning to my mama in the kitchen cooking for her family of 8 with love in every spoon stoke.  To daddy hollering at my mama to make him a cup of coffee.  He never could get out of bed until that first cup.  And every morning for 39 years she would have it ready to take to him.  I wan't to sit at the breakfast table with all 5 of my brother's and sisters.  I want Joey to steal my sausage from my plate because mine lasted the longest.  We would all see who could make our sausage last the longest cause it was a treat for us.  And Joey would steal from everyone's plate..lol.  He had too...if you would have seen him, it took a lot of food for that Giant.  I want John Paul to grunt at me instead of talking because we waited on him hand and foot and he didn't need to talk.  I want Phillip singing "Killing Time" and playing along on the broom.  And Autum...I will just take her at anytime our life together.  She was fun.

Ah, but time changes, people are lost, and time goes on...sometimes...without you.  My family just had a big party and my brother said they were doing Karaokee and he missed me.  I was always the entertainment for the family.  It was something I did, and I thought it was something that I couldn't be replaced doing, but I guess I was..cause they had fun, and it was without me.  I am glad they had fun, and I am glad they had everyone around them...I just wish I was there to see it.

B

What Has Been Going On Around Here...

Hello Blog readers.  Not a whole lot has been going on around here but I will fill you in on what has.

Well last night on May 14th, my beautiful daughter had her 8th grade formal.  She was so very pretty. 

 (I did her hair...pretty good for someone that has never done it before)

(the dress she decided not to wear)

She brought tears to my eyes as I watched her walk off and into the dance. It has only reminded me how fast time has gone by.  I rememebered that little baby girl that use to run around with a blanket on her head but never, but once, ran into anything.  I am so very proud of her.  She has her moments where I want to back hand her, but all in all, she makes me proud.

My son is pretty proud of himself too...  He changed the brakes on our truck while his dad supervised...

He was filthy, but I was so happy that he took the interest and did it!  When he was done he was so happy.  Said he had a blast.  He went and grabbed my camera phone with those dirty hands and insisted that I take his picture so he could remember it.  I do believe that he is going to be a good man, and a woman is going to be lucky to have him.  Although last night, his entire future flashed before my eyes and I have to admit...I didn't like his wife ;)

And then there is this man...

He just wont slow it down.  Well, it has all caught up with him and he has been in bed now for three days.  Aches and pains running all through him.  Throwing up and very weak.  As much as I like being his nurse ;) I feel so bad for him when there is nothing I can do.  But a big part of me wants to yell out...I TOLD YOU SO!  Men don't listen.  He is wanting to go back to work so badly, and even though his illness prevents it, I am scared it is going to kill him if he don't go back.  Even though he is having feelings of being less then a man...is still all the man I need!

We went for a ride on Mother's Day, which was this past Thrusday for me.  I asked them to take me up to the Appalachian Trail.  I just love the view from there.

The view just makes me feel so close to God.  One day, when we move up to Blairsville, I want to find my own little spot, where I can write, pray, think and just be by myself...Someplace that looks just like this.

There is a little store here as well.  You can stop and rest, take a shower, eat, sleep and all that good stuff.  But the neatest thing I like to see when I go is this...

You can't see them very well, but a lot of people that come through here, throw their hiking shoes up in the tree.  It is just filled with shoes with soles falling off, duct taped together, and just flat out filthy.  But they left their mark that says...I hiked this trail and I was here.  I just think it is so much fun to see. 

Well, that about wraps up my week, and probably the month so far.  We don't do a lot, but you know what....I enjoy what we do get to do!

B

Don't Know Why This Matters...

I am not exactly sure why I am going to write about my illnesses and surgeries, but for some reason it is on my mind.
I was thinking about it last night and woke this morning and there it was still on my mind.

When I was in my younger years the first accident I had that I can remember very clear was when my mom took me for a walk down the side walk to a yard sale.  I was roughly 5 or 6 years old.  I use to love to go around barefoot and that day was no different.  As I was walking down the sidewalk, I stepped on something and I can still remember the pain shooting all the way up my leg.  I dropped to the ground and mama looked at my foot but she wasn't sure what it was.  She picked me up and carried me home.  When we got home she looked at my foot and said it was a needle..but not to worry she got it and it was a part of a needle.  When I stood up the pain was still shooting up my foot.  She decided to take me to the ER and when they did an x-ray on my foot, there was two other parts of the needle left.  The cut my foot open and found two rusted needles.  Got three stitches and that was done.

A couple years later when I was around 8 or 9, there was a rock pile of little pebbles I use to like to play on.  There was a couple of large rocks but I never worried too much about it.  I would go to the top of the pile and slide down.  Well my luck ran out one day and as I was coming down the pile my wrist went across a Sharp rock and it slit the pinkie side of my wrist.  My hand came up and there was blood everywhere.  The slab of skin was laying open and I ran home.  Mom rushed me to the hospital and ended up with 5 stitches.

Around that same age, there was also a building down from our house that had an opening where the semi's would back up to unload stuff.  Well this ramp would fill up with water every time it rained.  My cousin and I thought it would be fun to go play in it.  Well we had a heck of a good time.  But that night we became very very itchy.  We both broke out in hives and red rashes all over our bodies...Hello...Infantigo.  We had to put purple medicine on us for a little over a week.

No other accidents until the age of 16.  I was dating a guy, Chad, and just thought the world of him.  Well Chad, me and my cousin became close.  We hung out all the time together.  Well, my cousin and Chad became a lot closer then I would have liked, but didn't find out until after the night that ruined my career.  One night, this cousin got hit by a car.  And when Chad came over to my house I asked him to take me to the hospital to see her.  But I first wanted to stop over at her house and check on my aunt, because the girl that hit my cousin was out in front of my aunts house yelling at my aunt.  Long story a little shorter, on the way over there, I don't know if Chad thought there was going to be trouble or what, but he stopped at the road that turned off to her house.  Just stopped right in the middle of the road.  Like he was sitting there thinking.  Next thing I know he turns the corner super fast.  I grab the dashboard of the truck to brace myself, but I still fell over sideways.  My hands slide across the dash and over onto his lap from falling sideways.  When I sat back up, the part of the hand that is between my thumb and my index finger was cut and blood was shooting out of it every time my heart would beat.  I screamed bloody murder, wrapped my hand in my shirt and screamed at him to get me to my aunts house.  When we get there I am covered in blood from head to toe.  My aunt about fainted she said cause of all the blood.  She thought I had be stabbed all over.  Well we wrapped my hand in a towel and my aunt called the cops.  Because come to find out I was stabbed.  Chad had gotten a knife out when he stopped in the road.  Had it between his legs sticking up.  When I fell over my hand landed right on top of the knife.  At the hospital I was in the next room where my cousin was laying.  The reason I say it ruined my career, was because I had been talking to a woman and she had offered me an internship when I became a senior in Fashion Designing.  She had seen my drawings and was really impressed.  But, I haven't been able to draw since.  When it happened, it went in through the thumb and index finger and straight down through my hand...like slicing it in half.  It cut all the ligaments in my hand and when it healed, still to this day I can not move my thumb all the way backwards, like before.  Anyway, it went to a lawyer and I got a nice lump sum of money that I got when I turned 18, but I never got to spend it...my sister such had a nice time with it though!

Had a gallbladder attack and had to have my gallbladder removed, but not before my pancreas returned to normal size, a week later.

When I was married the first time I was in and out of the hospital all the time when I was pregnant.  Pains in my stomach.  Come to find out when they cut me open due to an emergency C-section, I had a large cyst on my ovaries, so after I had her, they kept me in the operating room for 2 hours afterwards to remove the cyst.

Second C-section, I was cut open while not fully numb.  The pain became so unbearable that I threw up everywhere on the operating table.  They finally knocked me out.

Hospitalized for Migraines, while pregnant with my daughter.
After I had my daughter, and released from the hospital, I had to return back to the ER because I was having HORRIBLE headaches because the spinal fluid was leaking out of my spine from where they did my spinal tap.  They injected a huge needle into my spine and drew out fluid and shot it back in where it was leaking....Headaches instantly gone.

Another C-Section and a couple months after that a Tube ligation.

The last time I was in the hospital with anything seriously wrong was when my left breast swelled up to the size of a small watermelon.  No joke.  It was so painful, I think it was the most painful thing I had ever had to go through.  The ER cut it open right there on the table and the most nastiest stuff went everywhere.  Long story short, 3 lumpectomies later it never returned.  Over the course of a year it came back 3 times. 

PreDiabetic but lost weight and it took care of itself.  And I believe that is it.  Again not sure why it was important for me to write this but my mind wouldn't leave me alone until I did.  Any questions..just ask!

B

We Don't Like What You May Do, BUT....

Every time I try to straighten myself out and my emotions, something or someone else will come along and just throw me so far into a loop that it is going to take me another year to sort through it all.

I posted tonight on my Facebook, a status of... My heart is hurting for a very large group of people, and I don't know how to make it stop.

This status was directed toward a very disturbing sermon I clicked on about a preacher teaching his church that there was no Father, Son and Holy Ghost....Only One God.

This really bothered me and my heart really hurt for these people.  When a cousin of mine came back with the reply that if I would just come home things would be fixed.  I replied back, even though I couldn't think of why she would respond like that, that I would love to come home, but this status was about something much larger.

Her reply was this and I am quoting, bad typing and all...
"well i kinda no how it is and maybe one day we can sit down and talk about it.  just remember we might not like what u do but we still love u. just always live day by day and life on life's terms i know it sound easy but only u know ur hurt and pain just no u dont have to do it alone. no matter what billi im here i no we lost touch for a long time but we are still family and thats all that matters. so head up u have to keep going u have a husband and 2 other kids that needs u to be the best u can.  sometimes somethings are just better left alone. and only god is the one to judge. no one eles."

Oh yeah she did.  Made all the other nice things she said just invisible to me.  We don't like what you may do but...  I am sorry, not like what I do...can you please be specific for me?

I am a stay at home mother and pretty much have been my kids whole life.  I have not left their sides nor have I ever pawned them off on anyone to watch.  They have never even had a babysitter.  I am a faithful wife to my husband, never cheated on him and have stood by his side.  I have nursed him back to health as he laid on his death bed.  I am a God fearing woman that has had her share of demons but have chosen to work through them without bringing everyone around me into them or bringing them down.  I don't drink, I don't do drugs, have only had a total of 4 sexual partners my entire life and I was married to two of them.  I don't start fights among people, I hurt for people, I try my darnedest not to judge anyone for any mistakes they may have made in their lives...and trust me, my family have made plenty of them.

So I am sorry they don't like the things I may do...should I try to change to fit in with them more?  I am far from an angel, but even farther from being made into some sort of evil person.  So I am sorry, thanks for the offer dear cousin of mine...but I think I will just stay right where I am and remain who I am.  Cause even though you may not like who I am, I love me.

B

Happy Mother's Day

It was a nice Mother's Day.  My daughter called me from Ohio, which was a very nice surprise.  My children cleaned my house for me and cooked dinner.  We are not offically celebrating Mother's Day until Thursday but the best Mother's day gift I got today was....

My own mother wished me

a Happy Mother's Day,

AND, she said she loved me!!!

B

Brushed by the hand of God

I went for a walk this evening, up toward the mountain through the forest.  Such beauty.  Looking all around at all the wonders...the lush grassy floor, the stream, the different plants just starting to bloom.  I am blessed to have such art brushed by the hand of God, right outside my back door.

I wanted to just take pictures of everything.  Everywhere I turned there was something more beautiful.  I feel closer to God begin out there.  Looking at all those things, it is my sign from Him that He is indeed there, watching over me. 

My husband and I sat down yesterday morning and had a nice long talk.  A talk that I needed so very badly.  I have lost my way in a large degree.  I remember when I was younger, God's light shown through me.  I was so close to him.  When I got saved, oh that feeling that you can just float, it was the best feeling.  Unlike anything I can really explain.  I don't feel that feeling anymore.  I know I have lost my inner light.  So he and I talked about finding our way again.  I am going to start looking for a little church.  It has to be a little one, with my fear of people, which is a whole nother blog, it has to be as small as possible.  I am ready to get back on the right track.  I miss it.

I was telling my husband that I feel that Satin has just completely taken me over.  He asked me why and I was ashamed of my answer.  I didn't want to tell him.  But I began to explain...

If you have read any of my earlier posts, you will know I am not an avid sleeper.  Sleep for me is far and in between.  I lay in bed thinking of everything from my graying hair to the worlds problems.  In this time I will stop my thinking and begin to pray sometimes.  And in the middle of those prayers, I fall right off to sleep without a moments notice.  I know beyond a shadow of a doubt, it is the Devil putting me right to sleep, keeping me from speaking with God.  The bad part is, that sometimes I am so completely exhausted and not thinking straight, I will begin to pray, just because I KNOW I will fall off to sleep.  For this I hate myself.

I am now back on a prayer routine, and instead of just laying there praying, I will either speak the prayer allowed, or kneel at my bedside to assure myself of not falling asleep.

Now I know Satin will be working harder on me now then ever before, because he knows I am getting closer to God.  So I still have a major battle ahead of me.  But at least now I know I am in the battlefield with my God, instead of in a mine field with Satin.